Letting Go of What is Not Inherent

Soft pink apple blossoms litter the trail, May's declaration of the eternal. We walk together, past the old cellar hole now ridden with yellow sorrel, and past the detritus of the family that so long ago lived there - nails, bottles, buckets, buttons - which surface after rain. Toad-colored leaves or leaf-colored toads? I am the man for whose craft the distinction matters.

And one of the first poems I ever wrote for you was about apples, their pale blossoms falling softly in your brown hair at dusk. This happened twenty-one years ago when we first visited Quonquont orchards, and the memory of it - both poem and picking - softens yet the gnarled interior. Nothing changes but that we remember nothing need change. The blossoms fall again and we walk through them, in the old way of men and women who are in love, and whose love is in the earth and above it too.

At night, stars remind me of bluets, and bluets of what for so long went unsaid. One writes in order to appease others, and to attract others, and then one day remembers Who is always here. Perceive the infinite sea and then do nothing to disturb its waters indeed. As once I stayed awake while you slept, our daughter cooing in your arms, and beheld nothing else but that, and for a moment wanted nothing else.

At last I see that the dogs forgive me, and so I can let them go, I can let them be dogs again. Bees drowse in the tall grass watched over by dandelions. Relinquish what impedes expression. Give yourself now to only this action.

At dusk last night, while I sat quietly and happily, a rabbit grazed at the road's edge, and an oriole alighted on a branch that was close to me. And I loved them but did not linger on them, for there is nothing special in the Kingdom. In you I perceive salvation which is simply the letting go of what is not inherent. Mid-morning, New England, Spring.